Is there anything quite like the kick in the teeth of being dumped by someone you once loved madly, of having to start over when you thought you’d never have to date again? Or the terrifying moment of being naked again in front of a stranger? It’s all there, right in Jill Clayburgh’s face. I haven’t seen this movie in thirty years or so, and as I watched it last night, I thought about something a friend’s daughter once said when she overheard us talking. “The only thing that’s getting me through high school is thinking that once I’m grown up, there won’t be all this obsessing over boys,” she said. “But from listening to you, it sounds like it never stops.” You could hear the teen angst in her voice.
We burst out laughing. “No, honey. It never, ever ends,” her mother said. “Ask your grandmother.”
My mother used to say, “Girlfriends will see you through times of no men better than men will see you through times of no girlfriends.” She was 86 but still chatted on the phone every day with her friends or with her last sister. It was reassuring, not scary the way the thought of being alone used to be.
That whole thing of being all raw nerves: Will he call? Won’t he? Is he telling the truth? Am I telling the truth? This is why living alone is not so bad. Not having my head space filled with someone else’s expectations is good, not having to give a shit over whether I’ve annoyed someone is liberating. More room to create.
I like to create.
A fav